Psychometric structure of the short Internalized Homonegativity scale in 38 European countries

Introduction: Internalised Homonegativity (IH) is the internalization of negative attitudes and assumptions about homosexual people by homosexuals themselves. Studies the European Men-Who-Have-Sex-With-Men (MSM) Internet Survey (EMIS), the largest MSM international Internet based self-completion survey, showed the associations between IH and HIV/STIs related behaviors such as HIV/STIs testing or access to condoms. However, these findings were found under the assumption that the structure of the short IH scale was equivalent across the whole study population. Therefore, it is critical to develop a psychometric structure of IH and then access the measurement and structural invariance of this structure across age, education, and country subgroups.

Methods: Eight items of the short IH scale were measured by a 7-point Likert score. Subsample of EMIS data including 125,841 respondents as randomly split into two halves: a training dataset and a testing dataset.  By using Confirmation Factor Analysis, IH structure was developed in the training dataset, and validated in the testing dataset. The IH scale’s configural invariance, scalar invariance, residual invariance, and structural invariance were accessed across training and testing datasets, and across age, education, and country subgroups.

Results/Conclusions: an IH structure was developed with the fit indexes CFI=0.99, TLI=0.983, and RMSEA=0.03. This model was confirmed when it was equivalent between two halves of datasets, and between age and education subgroups. The intercepts of two items was variant across country subgroups, indicating the partly equivalence. These results suggest the appropriateness of this IH scale and structure for European MSM and can be used for future studies.